The Lantern Man

In the summer of 2009, my cousin Lila and I were inseparable. We spent our weekends at my grandmother’s old farmhouse, a place that always smelled of mothballs and damp wood. One evening, after a trip to the Dairy Bar for orange sherbet cones, we turned onto the gravel path leading to the farmhouse. The headlights swept across the front yard, and there, crouched by the side of the barn, was a figure—a tall, thin man in a long coat, holding a dim lantern that cast a sickly yellow glow. As the beams touched him, he darted behind the barn. We rushed inside, expecting to see him from the kitchen window, but the yard was empty. The only sign was the faint odor of sulfur and a wet footprint on the porch, too large for any human shoe.

A month later, Lila and I were filming a mock documentary for a school project. The theme was ‘Local Legends,’ and we decided to include a segment about the ghost that supposedly haunted the old root cellar. We set up in the upstairs study, a room my grandmother used for her mysterious ‘preserves.’ The light was dim, filtered through dusty lace curtains. As we were filming, a shadow slinked across the far wall, not matching our movements. It moved from the corner to the window, pausing there. We both saw it distinctly, and it wore a bright yellow raincoat, incongruous in the heat of July. The shadow lifted its hand as if pointing to the window, and then it vanished. We found the window slightly ajar, though we had locked it earlier.

That autumn, Lila stayed over for the weekend. We lay on the floor in the front room, directly opposite the main entrance, the door cracked to let in a breeze. The house was silent, save for the creaking of old wood. Around 2 AM, we heard a peculiar click, like a latch being turned. I peered through the gap and saw a silhouette outlined against the moonlit porch—a figure in a yellow coat, standing perfectly still, holding a lantern that flickered with no visible flame. The figure raised its other hand and tapped the glass, the sound like a fingernail on a window. Then it turned and walked away, its footsteps crunching on the gravel, loud in the quiet night. But when we mustered the courage to look, the yard was empty again.

We never spoke of these occurrences at the time, each thinking we had imagined it. But years later, after my grandmother passed away, we found in her attic a yellowed photograph of a man in a yellow raincoat, standing beside a lantern in a field. On the back was a date: October 31, 1923. My grandmother’s diary, tucked in a shoebox, mentioned a groundskeeper who had disappeared during a storm, and that his lantern was still lit. The next day, we took the photo to the old cemetery and placed it on the grave bearing the name ‘Jasper Whitfield.’ As we left, we both saw it—a brief flicker of yellow among the headstones. The lantern man had found his final witness.